Richard III of England

Richard became Duke of Gloucester in 1461 when his brother Edward IV took the throne during the Wars of the Roses, the Yorkist-Lancastrian struggle that consumed the royal family. He married Anne Neville in 1472 and governed northern England until Edward died in April 1483, leaving a twelve-year-old heir. Richard was named Lord Protector, but before the coronation Edward IV's marriage was declared invalid, the children illegitimate, and on 25 June an assembly proclaimed Richard the rightful king. The boy-king and his younger brother, the "Princes in the Tower," vanished from the Tower of London that August. Two rebellions followed: one in October 1483 led by the Duke of Buckingham, another in August 1485 when Henry Tudor landed in Wales with French troops and marched through Pembrokeshire. Richard's army fell near Market Bosworth; he died in the fight, was buried without ceremony in Leicester, and spent five centuries under a parking lot before archaeologists confirmed the skeleton in 2012.